Non-intervention: The History of a Liberal Ideal

This chapter traces the development of one tradition of liberal international relations, ‘non-interventionism’, over the course of the past four centuries, beginning with the publication of one of the first treatises on international law in 1625 and ending with the present. While stressing that the doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other nations rarely achieved the status of a rock-solid dogma, it argues that many leading classical liberals across the ages extended their aversion to domestic interventions into the realm of international relations by developing theories of anti-imperialism and anti-interventionism. Conversely, arguments for colonialism and for an activist foreign policy often went hand in glove in the thought of progressive liberals, such as in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. Although liberal imperialism was eventually discredited, I maintain that the interventionist mindset that has dominated liberal foreign policy thought in the last couple of decades is ultimately rooted in colonial ideas of Western cultural supremacy.